Stewart and Lynda Resnick Internet Price

What’s Stewart and Lynda Resnick’s Internet Price?

Stewart and Lynda Resnick are an entrepreneurial couple who’ve a internet price of $8 billion. Stewart and Lynda Resnick earned their fortune due to their privately held conglomerate, The Great Firm, which owns a spread of well-liked client manufacturers, together with FIJI Water, POM Great, Great Pistachios, Halos Mandarins, JUSTIN Wines, Landmark Vineyards, and Teleflora. Over the previous 4 many years, the Resnicks have quietly constructed one of the profitable meals and beverage empires in america, with estimated annual revenues exceeding $6 billion. Along with their enterprise ventures, the couple has additionally change into identified for his or her large-scale philanthropy, funding main initiatives in schooling, local weather science, and the humanities.

Whereas they’re largely publicity-shy and barely give interviews, Stewart and Lynda Resnick rank among the many richest self-made {couples} on the planet, with enterprise pursuits that span agriculture, water infrastructure, floral supply, and luxurious items. Their rise from modest beginnings to billionaire standing is a uniquely American success story.

Early Life and Background

Stewart Allen Resnick was born in 1936 in New Jersey. He earned a bachelor’s diploma in enterprise administration from UCLA, adopted by a J.D. from UCLA Regulation College in 1962. He briefly practiced regulation earlier than shifting into entrepreneurship. Within the late Sixties, Stewart started buying and working companies, beginning with janitorial providers and shifting into safety programs with an organization referred to as American Safety Industries.

Lynda Rae Harris was born in Baltimore and raised in Philadelphia. She studied journalism and advertising and marketing and commenced her profession in promoting. In 1969, she based her personal promoting company, Lynda Resnick Promoting, and constructed a consumer roster that included high-profile manufacturers and political campaigns. The couple met within the early Seventies, married in 1973, and shortly started collaborating on enterprise ventures. Lynda introduced advertising and marketing savvy and branding experience; Stewart centered on operations and acquisitions.

The Creation of The Great Firm

All through the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, the Resnicks quietly started buying agricultural and client product companies in California’s Central Valley. They bought Teleflora, a floral supply service, in 1979, and within the early Nineteen Eighties acquired Franklin Mint, a producer of collectibles. However their greatest wins got here in agriculture.

In 1981, the couple bought Paramount Citrus, a sprawling citrus enterprise in California. Over time, they expanded their holdings to incorporate pistachios, almonds, and pomegranate orchards, reworking the Central Valley right into a vertically built-in agricultural hub.

Their holdings have been finally unified below Roll International, which they later renamed The Great Firm in 2015. In the present day, the corporate is among the largest privately held agricultural conglomerates on the planet, managing greater than 135,000 acres of farmland in California and Texas.

The Great Firm’s core manufacturers embody:

• FIJI Water – Acquired in 2004, now one of many best-selling imported bottled water manufacturers within the U.S.
• POM Great – Pomegranate juice firm launched in 2002 after the Resnicks started planting 1000’s of acres of pomegranate bushes.
• Great Pistachios & Almonds – One of many largest producers and entrepreneurs of pistachios and almonds on the planet.
• Great Halos – Market-leading model of California-grown mandarins.
• JUSTIN Vineyards & Vineyard and Landmark Vineyards – Premium wine labels centered on Paso Robles and Sonoma Valley varietals.
• Teleflora – A floral wire service with a community of 10,000 florists throughout the nation.

The corporate has additionally invested closely in vertical integration. They management their very own packaging crops, bottling services, advertising and marketing, and even trucking. This has enabled them to construct environment friendly provide chains and management branding from farm to shelf.

Advertising Mastery

Lynda Resnick has performed a central function in constructing The Great Firm’s model identification. Her early promoting work helped form the advertising and marketing of POM Great and FIJI Water, each of which relied on smooth packaging, health-focused messaging, and savvy partnerships.

POM Great, particularly, grew to become a cultural phenomenon within the early 2000s. The juice’s distinctive bottle design and daring well being claims—later challenged by the FTC—helped catapult pomegranate juice right into a $100 million enterprise. Lynda additionally helped launch quirky, high-visibility campaigns for Great Pistachios, together with celebrity-endorsed adverts and Tremendous Bowl commercials.

Lynda revealed a e book in 2009 titled “Rubies within the Orchard”, which detailed her branding philosophy and the Resnicks’ path to constructing iconic client manufacturers.

Actual Property Holdings

The Resnicks have assembled an enormous actual property portfolio, with properties in Beverly Hills, Aspen, and Hawaii. Their most high-profile asset is a 74-acre property in Aspen referred to as Little Lake Lodge. In September 2025, the property was listed on the market for $300 million, making it the costliest house on the U.S. market on the time. The 27,000-square-foot compound contains 18 bedrooms, 20 loos, a six-acre personal lake, and direct entry to mountain climbing and ski trails.

In addition they personal a historic property in Beverly Hills, and in 2019, it was reported that that they had bought further land in Kauai, Hawaii.

Philanthropy

The Resnicks have donated greater than $2.5 billion to numerous causes, with a concentrate on schooling, local weather analysis, well being, and neighborhood revitalization.

Their largest reward got here in 2019, when they pledged $750 million to Caltech to assist environmental sustainability and local weather analysis. It stays one of many largest donations ever made to a U.S. tutorial establishment.

They’ve additionally contributed:

• $100 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork (LACMA)
• $50 million to UC Merced
• $30 million to the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA
• Tens of hundreds of thousands to neighborhood initiatives in California’s Central Valley, together with faculties, parks, and wellness facilities

They established the Great Schooling initiative, which gives scholarships, mentoring, and job placement to college students in farming communities served by their firm.

California Water Controversy

Stewart and Lynda Resnick’s management of water rights in California has lengthy been one of the controversial facets of their enterprise empire. Whereas they’ve helped flip the Central Valley into one of the productive agricultural areas on the planet, critics argue they’ve accomplished so partially by leveraging disproportionate entry to one of many state’s scarcest and most important sources: water.

By The Great Firm, the Resnicks personal greater than 175,000 acres of farmland, together with over 80,000 acres of almonds and pistachios—two of probably the most water-intensive crops in agriculture. In accordance with estimates, Great makes use of round 150 billion gallons of water per yr, sufficient to produce San Francisco for a whole decade. The corporate claims lower than 1% of the state’s water use and says most of that comes from long-term land-based rights, not short-term purchases. Besides, their monetary potential to purchase water when wanted usually drives costs greater in a strained market.

On the coronary heart of the controversy is the Kern Water Financial institution, a 32-square-mile underground reservoir in Kern County that may retailer as much as 1.5 million acre-feet (roughly 488 billion gallons) of water. The Resnicks, by means of a personal entity referred to as Westside Mutual Water Firm, personal a 57% stake within the financial institution. The water is used to recharge aquifers and assist their orchards throughout dry years. Whereas their possession stake is authorized and stems from a 1994 settlement referred to as the Monterey Modification, critics argue the deal privatized what ought to have remained a public useful resource. Water regulation analysts word that the Kern Water Financial institution was initially funded and developed by the state utilizing taxpayer {dollars} earlier than management was transferred, below opaque circumstances, to a mixture of personal pursuits—together with the Resnicks.

Environmental advocates argue this transfer allowed the couple to “financial institution” public water and use it as a drought hedge, all whereas surrounding communities—usually poor, rural, and closely Latino—face water insecurity. In some areas of the Central Valley, residents depend on trucked-in water as a result of their wells have run dry. “The Resnicks are so dominant,” stated environmental historian Char Miller. “The disempowered communities are on the different finish of a scale that’s tipped mightily in opposition to them.”

In early 2025, this longstanding controversy became a viral firestorm when conspiracy theories started circulating on-line falsely claiming the Resnicks have been “hoarding water” in the course of the lethal Los Angeles wildfires. Some posts went as far as to say they owned “60% of the water in California”—an announcement that’s factually false and grossly deceptive. In actuality, the Resnicks management 57% of 1 regional water financial institution, not 60% of the whole state’s provide. California strikes over 40 million acre-feet of water yearly, and the Kern Water Financial institution represents a small fraction of that whole.

Consultants have been fast to debunk the claims. Officers from the California Division of Water Sources, UC Davis, and the Kern Water Financial institution Authority confirmed that Los Angeles had enough native water provides for firefighting efforts. The difficulty, they defined, wasn’t water availability—it was water stress and infrastructure. “The logistical and operational wants required to maneuver water from a water financial institution in Kern County to Los Angeles in a well timed method can solely be urged by those that aren’t knowledgeable on how water infrastructure works,” stated Joe Butkiewicz, common supervisor of the Kern Water Financial institution.

Past misinformation, the net assaults in opposition to the Resnicks additionally took on an anti-Semitic tone. A number of broadly shared posts accused the couple of maliciously taking advantage of catastrophe, invoking conspiracy tropes widespread in far-right on-line communities. A spokesperson for The Great Firm referred to as the claims “uninformed, discredited, and false,” and identified that Great staff in Los Angeles had additionally misplaced properties within the fires. The corporate donated $10 million to wildfire aid, together with $1 million to the Los Angeles Fireplace Division Basis.

Nonetheless, the broader discomfort stays. Critics argue that the consolidation of water rights into the palms of personal billionaires—no matter legality—poses long-term dangers for fairness and sustainability, significantly within the face of local weather change. “Property like this that have been as soon as in public management and now are in personal management have to be returned to the general public,” stated Alexandra Nagy of Meals & Water Watch. “Particularly with local weather change and in moments of drought, that is when company pursuits take benefit and push their agenda the toughest.”

The Resnicks argue they have been accountable stewards of their sources. They level to their use of superior drip irrigation, their function in growing climate-resilient farming strategies, and their record-setting $750 million donation to Caltech for local weather analysis. In addition they fund well being clinics, faculties, parks, and school scholarship applications within the Central Valley.

However their central function in California’s water economic system stays deeply polarizing. Whether or not seen as forward-thinking agricultural innovators or aggressive gamers in a damaged water system, one factor is obvious: the Resnicks have extra affect over how California grows—and waters—its meals than nearly anybody else.